Canadian Pacific at the Glenbow: a Hundred Years of the CPR in Western Canada

Canadian Pacific at the Glenbow: A Hundred Years of the CPR in Western Canada by GLENN T. WRIGHT All aboard! Two hundred and fifty historians, archivists, curators, and rail fans heard the traditional call of the railway porter and gathered at the Glenbow Museum last September to commemorate one hundred years of the Canadian Pacific Railway in Western Canada. Sponsored by the Glenbow-Alberta Institute with assistance from the National Museums Corporation and Canadian Pacific Limited. the festivities consisted of three major elements. In August the celebration began with the opening of the "Great CPR Exposition," a large exhibition that takes a comprehensive look at the construction, arrival and impact of the CPR on the Canadian West. During the month of September, the CPR West Conference attracted a good number of professionals and non-professionals and demonstrated that research on various aspects of CPR history is alive and well. To complement both the exhibition and the conference, Glenbow also sponsored the publication of a souvenir book, Trailoflron: The CPR andthe Birth qfthr West by William McKee and Georgeen Klassen. The centrepiece of Glenbow's tribute to the CPR is the6'Great CPR Exposition," the largest and most ambitious exhibition ever mounted by the Museum. Glenbow staff spent over two years collecting materials and conducting original research, and the result is impressive. The exhibition is an attempt to portray the history of the Canadian Pacific Railway and its impact on the social and economic development of Western Canada from the time of its inception and construction to the 1930s. Historical records have been drawn from virtually every media that one would find in an archives or museum. The result is a multi-media extravaganza that includes generous samples of such traditional exhibition fare as documents, photographs, maps, books, posters, works of art, and artifacts, but also complementing these sources (and stealing the show) are model trains, film, several detailed and colourful dioramas, and full-scale "stage" sets. It is a remarkable achievement -- bold in design, daring in execution, and truly informative. The exhibition is divided into four general sections. It opens with a small gallery that traces the birth of the idea from Major Robert Carmichael-Smyth's 1849 proposal for a "grand National Railway from the Atlantic to the Pacific." The second and third sections of the display examine the unsuccessful attempts of the federal government to build the line in the 1870s and the subsequent reversal of fortunes in the 1880s when the Canadian Pacific Railway Company undertook the work and completed the dramatic construction of the main line across the prairies 0 All rights reserved: Arc/zi13aria 17 (Winter 1983-84) CANADIAN PACIFIC AT THE <iI.ENBOW Poster irnage.for The Great CPR Exposition. Watercolour illustration (22" x 2Y") bj3 Calgarj, artist Dennis Budgen,features the.first locomotive to arrive in Calgar.~,#147. and through the mountains to British Columbia. The largest section of the exhibition is devoted to the operations and expansion of the CPR and its role in developing Western Canada. Samples of equipment and rolling stock are well illustrated with models, photographs, and paintings. The difficult and often treacherous operating conditions in the mountains are vividly portrayed with a three-quarter scale snowshed and an ingenious working model of the CPR's famous spiral tunnels near Field, B.C. 280 ARCHIVARIA 17 The coming of the railway had a lasting effect on the Western landscape and environment. The impact of the CPR on native peoples, the company's critical role in the settlement process, the selection and development of western townsites and its relationship to Western industrial growth are all documented and illustrated with artifacts, models, dioramas, posters, brochures, a 1910 promotional film, and so on. This portion of the exhibition also includes an impressive salute to the CPR and tourism in Western Canada. This is achieved with an array of photographs, posters, art, hotel furniture organized around stage settings of a dining car (with wine chilling in a bucket), and a sleeper. It is an elegant and nostalgic conclusion to an exhibition that never fails to evoke the past. The rich diversity of the material collected for the "Great CPR Exposition" is awe-inspiring. Paintings (often commissioned by the CPR) show the grandeur of the mountain scenery; dozens of marvellous photographs capture precious moments in time as only a photograph can do; artifacts from survey equipment to the last spike remind us that construction of the line was a great engineering achievement; and a full-scale set of a small prairie station (with lights flashing and telegraph clicking) in the 1930s is a wonderfully detailed recreation of the past. Travelling by train is not as easy nor as convenient now as it was in the days depicted in this exhibition. But if you can, buy a ticket and take a ride along Glenbow's version of the Canadian Pacific Railway - it is instructive, informative, and the scenery is memorable. The second element in Glenbow's tribute to the Canadian Pacific Railway was the CPR West Conference. Held in September over a period of five days, the conference attracted well over two hundred people interested in the history of the railway and its place in the development of Western Canada. The proceedings, consisting of twenty presentations, paralleled the events and themes highlighted in the exhibition. It is impossible to give a detailed account of each and every paper, but in order to convey the nature of the conference, a brief summary of the presentations might prove useful. The impact of the railway on people was explored from three very different points of view. Hugh Dempsey examined the culture shock experienced by the Indian people as the CPR snaked its way across the prairie. Patricia Roy looked at the labour question during construction, specifically Chinese labour, and in an exceptionally entertaining lecture, D.C. Jones revealed some of the successes and failures of the CPR's Colonization Department in Western Canada during the 1920s and 1930s. A second series of three papers was devoted to the impact of the railway on industry in the West. Sheilagh Jameson described the intimate, but not always peaceful, relationship that existed between the CPR and the cattle industry; coal mining and the petroleum industries were also capably examined in excellent papers by Andy Den Otter and David Breen, respectively. The railway also affected the landscape and the environment in the West. This general theme was explored with papers on the origins of the national park system and the role of the CPR by R.C. Scace; the company's irrigation work in southern Alberta was examined by E. Mitchner; and the CPR's townsite development policies were the subject of critical analysis by Calgary's historian, Max Foran. A related paper was Ted Hart's on the CPR and the beginnings of tourism in Western Canada, a subject that will be given more extensive treatment below. CANADIAN PACIFIC AT THE GLENBOW .I) Sir John and Lad,! Macdonald at Stave River, near Mission, B. C., 24 Julv 1886. Courtesy of the Glenbow Archives, NRM (b). A fourth category of presentations focused on some of the technical and engineering aspects of CPR history. Jim Shields and Omer LavallCe, both from the CPR Corporate Archives in Montreal, gave interesting papers on rolling stock and locomotive designers. John Marsh explained in as clear a fashion as possible the complexities and engineering accomplishments of the CPR's Spiral and Connaught Tunnels. The art and architecture of Canadian Pacific stations and hotels in Western Canada was the subject of a thoughtful presentation by Harold Kalman. Another series of papers examined what can best be called the "image" of the CPR. Robert Stamp gave a witty description of the 1939 Royal Tour in which the "train" seems to have been given as much publicity as the royal couple. Cecil Halsey (from the CPR Archives) revealed something of the company's vast photographic collection by showing examples of one official photographer, J.W. Heckman, and George F. Stanley delivered a delightful paper on artist John Hammond. The historical record comes in many media and this was not lost on conference organizers. The conference proceedings included a "movie night" and those who attended were not disappointed. Sam Kula left viewers howling for more after running a number of short films and clips that depicted the CPR from the turn of the century to the 1950s. Papers of a more general nature were provided by Ted Regehr, who looked at the progress of the railway construction through the eyes and pens of those at the "end of track." And John Eagle examined the presidency of Thomas Shaughnessy during the important years from 1899 to 19 15. Some papers were better than others. In a conference of this size, this was probably inevitable but, taken together, the sessions were enlightening and informative. The conference also revealed that a great deal of original research has been and is being done on many aspects of CPR history and, contrary to what some may think. not all of it is in praise of the company. The sessions were also well organized -- subjects were chosen that reinforced or elaborated upon themes highlighted in the exposition and. if audience response is any indication, those in attendance were pleased with the results. As a souvenir of the exposition and the conference, Glenbow archivists Bill McKee and Georgeen Klassen coauthored Trail of Iron: The CPR and the Birth of the West,' a profusely illustrated book that examines the role of the company in the development of Western Canada from the 1870s to the 1930s.

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